I just got my car back from the shop.
I had the oil changed and the tires rotated. The mechanic said, “You should probably check your alignment.”
I didn’t think that it was necessary since my car is only a couple of years old. But then he showed me the uneven wear pattern on my tires, and I acquiesced. As it turned out, I did need to have my wheels aligned and it is probably no great surprise why.
Our streets and roads have slowly but surely been deteriorating over the years, and the deficits facing all levels of government in California and across the country have left little money to fix the problems.
Driving on Concord Boulevard from downtown Concord out toward Clayton can only be described as one constant rumble strip while potholes capable of concealing Volkswagens abound in nearby Oakland.
Concord just completed a study of its 337 miles of streets. The study concluded that the city will need to spend significantly more on street maintenance to preserve the city’s transportation infrastructure in order to keep up with the inevitable aging of the streets.
You can well imagine that a city’s streets are a huge asset, or liability, depending upon your perspective. But no one will argue that it is so much cheaper to maintain streets than it is to rebuild them.
Concord uses no general fund money on street repairs and instead relies on money it receives from the state for gas tax (18 cents per gallon) and from the Contra Costa Transportation Authority for Measure J transportation sales tax.
But the gas tax is broken. As gas prices rise, gas consumption falls and the amount of gasoline tax collected falls.
Additionally, as our vehicles get better gas mileage, the amount of travel on streets can actually increase while the amount of gas consumed and gas taxes paid, falls.
How are we going to fix the problem of deteriorating streets, highways and bridges? And correspondingly, how are we going to pay for it?
There is no way that any legislator is going to suggest that we increase the gas tax when gasoline prices are already headed toward $5 a gallon.
Perhaps the gas tax is not the best way to fund street and road maintenance. Clearly the amount collected is not adequate.
Federal Department of Transportation officials have drafted legislation that would change the way that the federal government collects levies for maintenance of roads and bridges.
Instead of charging a federal gas tax which has lost a third of its purchasing power since it was last raised by Congress in 1993, planners are floating the idea of drivers paying based upon miles driven. The idea being that the more you drive the more road maintenance is associated with your use, and the more you pay. Basically, such a charge would be a user fee.
The concept sounds fair enough, especially if this method would be substituted for the federal gas tax. But then you get to the practical side of the equation — how do you collect it?
Different proposals have been made. One would require installation of a device in all vehicles that would track mileage.
In Singapore, every car has a device installed which tracks the number of miles driven so that the government can charge the vehicle owner based on mileage as opposed to how much gas you purchase.
But these “smart meters” for cars would probably not go over well here because of privacy concerns.
On the other hand, a lot of people, including myself, have FasTrak transponders for automatically paying tolls across our Bay Area bridges. What if every car had a similar device that could be used to track mileage?
Another proposal would allow inspectors to keep track of mileage between annual vehicle inspections.
But California is one of about one-third of all states that doesn’t have a vehicle inspection program. That would mean additional expense for odometer readers to those states that do not conduct vehicle inspections.
It is probably inevitable that we will see more toll roads as well.
But in the meantime, have your mechanic check the alignment on your car.
I fear that we will all be paying more — to our mechanics for all of the damage to our vehicles as we navigate over rough and tumble roads in our city and throughout the state.
Ron Mullin is a Concord resident, and former mayor and member of the Concord City Council. Contact him at columns@bayareanewsgroup.com.
